Young Teens Ask YouTube Commenters If They're Pretty, And The Results Are Often Damaging

Young teenagers want to know if they’re pretty, so they upload videos to YouTube posing the question to hundreds of thousands of strangers.

“People at school will tell me I’m ugly, but then my friends will say I’m pretty,” is a line that’s heard in most all of the videos, the average age of the uploader 12 or 13-years-old. “So just tell me in the comments what you think.”

The girls asking are young, adorable, and sweet. The question they’re asking is presented innocently. It’s all you can do not to reach into the screen and give them a hug, telling them to stay away from YouTube if they’re looking for any sense of self at such a fragile age.

The videos can range anywhere from a minute to five minutes long, The New York Times reports. Some of the girls give long explanations on why they want or need to be validated on a social network filled with strangers notorious for being cruel and unusual in their written punishments.

They all are dying for strangers on the internet, whom the teenagers truly believe to be a fair sampling of the world’s population, to validate them.

“I can take it,” a lot of the girls say in the videos, The Times points out.

Buzzfeed spoke to Louise Orwin, a 26-year-old artist from London, who concluded that the internet acts and looks like a safe space for teens but can be truly be dangerous.

“The problem is, the internet is so private for these girls because their parents probably don’t know they’re posting these videos,” Orwin concludes. “But at the same time it’s so public. And the way these girls express themselves makes them such an easy target for abuse.”